


Winter Gifts

by tafkar



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:34:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27953975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tafkar/pseuds/tafkar
Summary: "The Abydonians might not have a solstice-related gift-giving holiday, but Christmas had come for Dr. Daniel Jackson."
Relationships: Daniel Jackson/Sha're
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Winter Gifts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wisdomeagle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/gifts).



> Thanks to: Quinnclub for a great midnight beta, Rose and Otter for suggestions on how to fix the very dead middle bit, Fenriss for telling me the first part was hot, and Starkeymonster for showing me just how hot it was.
> 
> Written as wisdomeagle's Stargate Santa present in 2004.
> 
> Author's notes: Though this story is not required for understanding of [Diving to Drown](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27954128) and vice-versa, attentive readers may pick up on the fact that this takes place in the same universe. (If you haven't read Diving to Drown yet, please know that although it's got even more sex, it's the polar opposite to this in tone.)
> 
> Musical notes, for the people who, like me, are curious as to what songs might fuel someone's writing process: much of the inspiration for this story came from music by Rachid Taha, Natascha Atlas, Oojami, Panjabi MC, and Putamayo's "Arabic Groove" CD. In particular: Natascha Atlas' "Ayeshteni" was my soundtrack for the opening scene. When Sha're is dancing, my soundtrack is Rachid Taha's "Nokta". I think it's pretty effective for the final scene, as well. If you have a particular song that comes to mind when reading any of this, I'd love to know what it is!

Daniel manfully tried to ignore the sounds of his wife and other residents of the village, who were talking in excited tones outside the tent. He finally drew the covers over his ears when his brain became alert enough to make sense of the Abydonian they were speaking. He wanted to delude himself, but he knew now that he was processing what they were saying, he'd never get back to sleep. After two months on the planet, the day was approaching when Abydonian would be as second nature for him as English or French or Arabic. Once that happened, he'd never be able to sleep in again.

He heard a rustle of cloth as Sha're slipped back into his tent, the rising heat of the new morning entering with her. "My husband," she said, curling up next to him and gently shaking his shoulder, "you must get up. The tribesmen have come, and are setting up their market out of town."

Daniel rolled over, pulling a bit more fabric over his ears. "I miss coffee," he whispered in English, then braced himself.

The expected playful whack on his shoulder came immediately, and he felt Sha're's hands scrabbling at the cloth he was holding around his head. "The first morning we awoke together," she said, yanking away the material that was the only thing protecting Daniel from the muted light streaming through the side of the tent, "you whispered words from your language in my ear." She'd wrested nearly all of the blanket from his grasp by now, and Daniel clung to the last bit firmly, rolling over onto his back to get more leverage, knowing that as soon as the sunlight hit his eyelids, he wouldn't have a prayer of going back to sleep. "I said to myself, 'Sha're, you must learn the tongue that this man speaks, so you can know the meaning of the endearment he whispers to you every morning.'" She was straddling his naked body now, the rough fabric of her robes scratching against his stomach and thighs, tugging breathlessly at the blanket, her voice trembling with suppressed giggles. "I think, he must be telling me how beautiful I am, or how waking up with me in his arms is the greatest gift a man has been given."

Daniel lost his grip on the last of the cloth, and blinked sleepily up at her. For a moment, the flying fabric concealed her face; then it was thrown to a corner of the tent and he could see her sparkling eyes, the little smile dancing around the edges of her attempt at a disapproving glare. "And what do I learn?" she said, reaching out to whack him on the shoulder again. "It is no endearment at all! You want coffee." She lingered over that last, foreign word, letting it drip out of her mouth, coated with sensuality.

Daniel grabbed her wrists before she could smack him a third time, lifting his hips and twisting to flip her onto her back, rolling on top of her. Her robe had slid up around her waist; the cloth rubbed against his chest as he pinned her down, but she was naked below it, allowing him to rub his morning hard-on against her soft, warm skin. "I thought you learned English so you could embarrass me at the dinner table in front of your father by making filthy suggestions to me."

She blinked innocently up at him, her expression belied by the languid motion of her pelvis under his. "Daniel, I would never say something terrible while we dined!"

He softened his voice and said, in English, quoting her, "I want to feel your mouth all over me, Daniel."

Her hips lifted to rub against him teasingly. "How can you be embarrassed when no one knows what I am saying except for you and I?" she smiled.

"I think your brother has some idea," he murmured, lowering his lips to her neck.

"Daniel!" she gasped out. "I came in to wake you so we could go to the market!" She writhed underneath him, trying to throw him off, laughing.

He pushed down her wrists again and clucked warningly. "The market can wait. First, I think I should give you what you asked me for at dinner."

"I thought you already did," she said, her eyes large and dark and inviting.

"No," Daniel said, releasing her wrists, tugging her robes over her head, and kissing his way down her body. "We made love, but you wouldn't let me give you what you asked for."

As he slid lower, between her legs, she sat up halfway, pulling at his shoulders, trying to prevent him from moving down any further. "Daniel, no," she said, blushing.

He looked up at her, across the curve of her belly and the mounds of her breasts, her glorious dark hair tumbling in waves around her shoulders. Her tawny skin was flushed, her cheeks red at the thought of what he was about to do, her eyes nervous and wide. He smiled up at her, his hands sliding over her hips. "Show me," he said, kissing lower and lower on her belly, peering up through his eyelashes in a way he'd learned was irresistible to her, "that you can be an obedient wife."

Sha're snorted at the suggestion.

He traced his fingers lightly over her hip – the right one, that spot that always made her body buck in pleasure – and she let out a gasping sigh, her eyes squeezing shut and her mouth falling open. "All right, pretend, for just a few moments, that you are an obedient wife. Lie still for as long as you can."

The smell of her sex was overwhelming. Bathing was infrequent on Abydos; water was more important for drinking than for cleaning skin. It had taken time for him to get used to the ever-present odor of unwashed bodies in a crowd, but he'd immediately adored the way the scent of his wife would fill their tent at night, how it would linger on his body long after they made love, reminding him of her in the middle of the day when he was helping to dig a well or herd farm animals. Since their very first night together, he'd wanted to taste her, but cunnilingus seemed to be an extraordinary taboo among her people, and every time he tried, she'd push him away, laughing and mortified. As Daniel kissed the inside of her thighs, he knew he wasn't going to wait any longer.

Her thighs and hips jerked underneath him as he lightly, carefully brushed just the tip of his tongue against the hot, red folds of her inner lips, outlining their contours with his mouth. He heard her strangled gasp, and she tried to move her hips away. He looked up at her, tossing his head to fling his long ragged hair out of his narrowed eyes. "Don't defy me," he said, one corner of his mouth quirking up.

Her eyes went wide and her thighs tensed. She shivered, and he saw one of her hands reach out to clutch at the fabric crumpled on the floor of the tent. He lowered his mouth again to taste the salt between her legs, glimpsing her pink tongue flicking out to lick her lips just before he buried his face in her again.

Her scent filled his nose and his mouth, earthy and rich, a seductive perfume. As he licked her with long, slow strokes, she began to writhe and moan. He used his tongue to map this newly discovered territory, feeling how there was a little spot where the skin tucked in on the left that wasn't quite matched on the right. When he extended his tongue into her, trying to lick out more of her juices, she called out, "Daniel!"

Daniel knew, from the whispers of the women of the village as he walked by and the good-natured ribbing of the men, that he'd begun to develop quite a reputation for the way he made his wife cry out in pleasure at all hours of the day and night. Ever the perfectionist, he was always seeking ways to make her wail louder, longer, faster, applying himself to the nuances of her body's reactions with the same intensity and vigor that he had used in learning Japanese or Ancient Greek. As he circled around the nub of her clitoris, gently teasing away the hood that covered it protectively, she cried out again. Her thighs pressed against the sides of his head, muffling the sounds of daily village activity outside the tent. The heat of the day was nothing compared to the heat of her body; he could feel drops of sweat trickling down his spine, down his tailbone. He slid his hands under her firm, round buttocks, raising her hips slightly toward him, the sheen of perspiration on their bodies allowing him to slip his hands up and caress the length of her back.

She jerked and shuddered on the floor of the tent as he languidly traced the English alphabet with his tongue, and he twisted his own hips, rubbing his cock against the rough fabric floor of the tent and the malleable sand beneath. He could feel her pulse and throb, again and again, against his lips, and the sensation drove him to continue, ignoring his own tight hard desire in favor of increasing her passionate fury.

His first roommate in college had told him that the surest way to a woman's orgasm was to sign your name between her nether folds with your mouth. After his first few sexual experiences with girls, Daniel decided that stopping at one's signature was for amateurs. As he finished the letters of his native tongue and switched over to the Cyrillic alphabet, keeping his wet strokes in a steady rhythm, Sha're's cries became louder and louder. "Daniel, Daniel, please, yes, Daniel!" she cried. She'd become a storm, and he was at the center of it – drowning happily in her damp essence, covered with her sweat, engulfed in her scent, her passionate shouts overwhelming any sounds from the people outside, wrapped in the feel of her soft, slick thighs against his cheeks and the tickle of her cloud of pubic hair against his nostrils, all of it condensed his world to Sha're.

Just wait until I spell out "beloved one" in kanji, he thought to himself.

By the time he slowly, carefully traced the Egyptian glyphs for "love" over that same sweet spot, drinking her liquid, she was thrashing. She screamed inarticulately as she came again under his mouth, and as her muscles tensed, her hands pulling at the blanket that lay between them and the sand, he heard the tear of fabric. She wasn't fighting to get away from him any longer; she shamelessly ground herself against his mouth, begging, "Please, yes, yes!" She shook and trembled, gasping, eyes wide and staring at him as he paused for a minute to admire her lying there, glorious and wild, stripped down to her animal essence by his actions. As he lowered his mouth, her eyes went wider and her hand reached up to claw at the nearest fabric – the wall of the tent.

He applied himself once more to her body, wondering just how many more orgasms he could wrest from her before he could hold himself back no longer from sliding inside her. As he extended his tongue again, her entire body jerked, and she screamed. Then he heard a creaking noise, and felt heavy cloth land against his back.

As the tent fluttered down over them, collapsing from Sha're's desperate tug in the throes of orgasm, he heard laughter from outside. "My brother, you will have to learn to pitch your tent more securely before you make love to your wife again!" Skaara called out.

Sha're's stomach bounced convulsively with giggles as Daniel slowly slid his way up her body, reaching one hand out to try to untangle his robes from the mountain of fabric piled around them. He flexed his tongue a little bit; he was out of practice, and the muscles of his mouth were sore.

"Maybe the kanji was overkill." he whispered, resting his head on her shoulder.

\-----

Eventually, with the laughing, teasing assistance of several villagers, Daniel and Sha're managed to find their clothes and extricate themselves from their tent. Sha're walked – barefoot, as always, the soles of her feet as tough as the leather sandals Daniel wore – down to the well with her brother, to fill their water sacks before they went to the market for the day. Daniel stayed behind to re-erect their tent, borrowing a mallet from Farrakh to hammer in the pegs.

Though it was hard to see it when he was wearing the loose, one-size-fits-all robes that the Abydonians preferred, Daniel could tell that he'd become more muscular since arriving on the planet, just by the ease with which he swung the heavy hammer, slamming the tent pegs deeper into the ground with every strike. When he wasn't on a dig, academia didn't afford many opportunities for physical labor, and he'd never seen the point in running around a track without actually going anywhere. The daily rigors of Abydonian living, however, gave him muscles he never would have developed with a regular gym membership on Earth. As he flipped the mallet around in his hand, noting the striations of muscle on his forearm, Daniel decided he liked the marks the hard labor was leaving on his body.

There wasn't much of a market for Daniel's primary skill set. He was teaching Sha're and some of the children to read and write, using the same hieroglyphs she'd fearlessly shown him, despite the threat of death from Ra for drawing the symbols, when he first came to Abydos. Teaching, however, didn't put food in Sha're's cookpot. Time on digs had made him an expert at digging holes, and experience in reconstructing ancient mechanisms gave him an eye for improvements to the infrastructure of the village. Ovens that would have seemed crude in the time of Caesar and Nero were incredible technological advancements for the Abydonians. When Daniel had built a chimney for Madad, the smith, the burly man kissed both of Daniel's cheeks and pressed five slivers of metal – the first hard currency Daniel had earned on Abydos – into his palm. Those coins clinked faintly every time Daniel swung the mallet.

Daniel was persistently, painfully aware that if it hadn't been for his wife, he would never have survived his first month in the desert. Even the voluminous robes he pulled back from his sweaty arms in order to get a broader swing were given to him by her. Most of the people seemed to think it was his due, recompense for the eradication of Ra. But Daniel still felt his contribution wasn't enough, and besides, the nuclear bomb had really been Jack's gift, not his. He'd just begun to pull his own weight, to contribute his half to their marriage, and now, with the traveling bazaar set up outside the town and a little copper jingling in his belt pouch, Daniel wanted to find a gift for her, in return for everything she'd bestowed upon him.

A shadow fell across Daniel as he hammered the last peg home. "My brother, I think you did not put the first stake in deeply enough," Skaara said, his arms folded, a big grin on his face.

Daniel stood up, letting the mallet fall to the ground, combing his hair back with one hand and wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve just before it dripped into his eyes. "Inspecting my work?"

"I have been…" Skaara smiled even more broadly, savoring the word, "supervising."

"Thanks. That's very helpful," Daniel said dryly, peering down the road through his taped-up glasses to see his wife striding toward them, water bags slung over her shoulder. He knew he only had a minute before she was in hearing distance, and leaned in a little closer to Skaara. "Brother of my wife, I need your help. I wish to buy a gift for my wife at the bazaar. Can you make sure she is elsewhere while I seek a gift for her?"

Skaara tried to look serious, but his lips curled up a little at the corners. "My brother, to do such a thing would require me to be dishonest to my sister, who I treasure beyond all else. What could ever convince me to lie to the woman who cared for me after our mother died?"

Daniel stared for a moment, blinking, and reviewed Abydonian social taboos in his head while chewing on his thumb. Familial duty – no, that was a little different…

"What could ever convince me to lie to her?" Skaara said again, raising his eyebrows meaningfully at Daniel.

Oh! Daniel looked into the distance. Sha're had stopped on the road, waylaid by the baker's wife. He could negotiate, but it would have to be quick.

"Um. I could…take care of herding the mastages for a week," Daniel said, knowing Skaara loathed looking after the smelly, messy animals.

Skaara snorted. "Daniel, brother, my sister would never forgive me when you came in stinking and covered with mucus and fleas." He leaned closer. "The bazaar has come to town, and I am so very poor."

Daniel sighed. He wasn't sure how much the coins he had were worth, and he hoped after he bribed Skaara there would be enough left to buy Sha're something beautiful. She was walking toward them again; there was no time to dance around with delicate negotiations, which was probably the reason Skaara brought it up at precisely this moment. "How much?"

"Three coppers," Skaara said.

Daniel's eyes widened. "That's more than half of what I have. One."

"Two. I could not deceive my sister for any less," Skaara said.

"You deceive your sister for free every day!" Daniel threw his hands up in the air, then tried to still his movements when he saw Sha're looking at him. "What about all the times you told her you were helping me dig Rahan's well and went off into the dunes with your friends to shoot off the guns Jack left you?" he hissed.

"I could not deceive my sister for you for less than two coppers," Skaara amended.

Sha're had nearly arrived. Daniel was stuck. "Fine," he sighed. He pulled two copper pieces out of his pocket and slipped them into Skaara's hand, wondering glumly as he did how to translate the expression highway robbery on a planet that didn't have inter-city roads. He saw Skaara adopt his most innocent expression, the same one he'd worn when Kasuf had found him dragging off an urn of beer, and schooled his own face to a similar mein of wide-eyed naivete. No, darling, nothing to see here.

His wife raised her eyebrows at her brother for a moment, and Daniel was sure he was sunk. Then she turned to Daniel with her brightest smile, and his stomach did a little flip, the same little flip it did every time he realized that by some stroke of fantastic fate, this beautiful, winsome creature was his. He was sure he was staring at her like a stunned yak, but from the way she kissed him, it seemed she found yaks attractive.

Her wide eyes were full of disappointment as she looked up at him. "Aayesha has reminded me that I must help her find wool for her husband's new robes. I know you will have no interest in this, my husband." Her sadness was almost palpable. "My brother will show you around the bazaar, I am sure. Shall we find each other after I've finished helping her?"

"Of course," Daniel said, sighing inwardly with relief. He still hadn't figured out an excuse that would let him get away from his wife to see what the bazaar offered. "I'll come find you when I'm done." He kissed the top of her head, and shot a meaningful look at Skaara as he did so, putting a little extra emphasis on the words when I'm done.

Skaara nodded solemnly at Daniel.

\-----

The market, with the tip of the pyramid visible over the sand dunes behind it, reminded Daniel of the souks in rural Egypt his parents had taken him to when he was a child. The tents were clustered close together, each with a brilliantly colored awning to protect customers from the bright, hot sun that beat down even this close to Abydos' winter solstice, their owners standing in front calling to the shoppers who walked from stall to stall. Spices were heaped in clay bowls, the scent of cinnamon and mastic riding out on heat waves, echoing the smell of Sha're that lingered on Daniel's hands and face. Stalls dedicated to wools, dyes, tools, and animals that had either been butchered oddly or bore little relation to those found on Earth clustered together with little organization. It was chaotic and wild, assaulting every sense, and Daniel could feel the muscles between his shoulder blades relax in the midst of the familiar, homey tumult. Next to a tent at which piles of wool lay heaped, Daniel saw exactly what he was looking for on a table under a blue awning. I hope Skaara is doing his job, Daniel thought, remembering Sha're's mission to find wool for Aayesha.

He stepped into the stall, staring at a copper necklace studded with green gems that he knew was far out of his price range. First rule of bargaining at the market, Daniel thought to himself: never start by looking at the thing you're actually interested in, or you'll immediately lose the upper hand in any negotiation with the vendor.

Behind the table, an older, heavyset man with a long beard smiled at Daniel. "At last we meet. I am Amjad, the only man in the land who crafts jewelry fine enough for one such as yourself. Your story has spread far and wide, my friend."

Oh, great, Daniel thought. Even with the tan, even if he covered his hair, the glasses gave him away to anyone at the market. There was some slight chance the price would get knocked down due to his renown, but it was more likely that he'd be treated like an American cruise passenger at a tourist bazaar in Cairo. What the other man didn't know, however, was that Daniel had learned to barter at the market while following his Egyptian nurse from stall to stall. The welcoming souks of the Middle East allowed him to unleash his dramatic, theatrical side in a way he never could in the West, and he relished the opportunity to do so here. Daniel answered the vendor's opening salvo with a smile of his own, and the battle was joined.

"A fine necklace such as that would highlight the beauty of your glorious wife," Amjad said, letting the linked plates slide over his hand so the green stones flashed in the sun.

Daniel thought the man probably hadn't spent much time with his relentlessly practical wife, who would rapidly become annoyed at the way the copper links would catch in her hair and on her robes. "Mmmmmm," he replied. "The metal is so heavy, and my wife is so delicate." It's a good thing Sha're isn't here, he thought. She would be doubled over with laughter at his claims. Daniel glanced at the rings displayed on a dark brown clay platter, and reached for a gold arm bracelet before Amjad could discover his true intent.

"Ah, yes!" Amjad said. "Think of how she will love you when you place that around her arm!"

Daniel thought Sha're would likely say, Why would I wear this when it will never be seen under my robes? And such soft metal – I will destroy it in a week! As a small cinnamon-scented breeze wafted past him, he put the gold coil back on the table. "My wife's arms are too slender to wear such a thing."

Now he looked more closely at the rings, bright circles of metal shining in sunlight tinted blue by the awning. He picked up one, a tiny, ornately worked thing of silver wrapped around a flat blue stone, the perfect thing to adorn his wife's perennially bare feet. "This," Daniel said, "this is as delicate and lovely as my precious Sha're."

Amjad bowed, his long beard pooling in the center of a gold necklace that lay on the table. "You honor my lowly work with your fine compliments. I would be blessed if your wife would wear that, and show all in your village the fine work done by Amjad."

"My wife would be honored to wear such a thing. But first I must know how much the fine work of Amjad is worth," Daniel replied, trying to keep from bouncing up and down in anticipation at the entertainment to come.

"From the man who killed Ra, I would only ask for four coppers."

"Four coppers?" Daniel laughed. "You must think I am Ra himself! I could not possibly give more than one copper for such work."

"One copper!" Amjad said, pressing a hand to his chest and gasping in horror, throwing himself into the role as much as Daniel was. "You would take the food from the mouths of my children and leave them to starve! My wife will never let me return home if I let you have it for less than three coppers."

"Three?" Daniel exclaimed, drawing himself up in the best imitation of fury he could muster and hiding the playful smile that threatened to spread across his face. "My wife will starve if I give you three coppers for this bauble! She is so slender already – why should I give you three coppers for this if it means she will be so thin as to be invisible when standing behind a tent rope? Two coppers."

"Ah," said Amjad. "You have not just killed Ra, you wish to kill me, too! You mock the sweat, the blood, the hard hours I labored with your paltry offer. I will accept no fewer than three coppers for this fine ring."

Daniel raised his eyebrows and shrugged, flipping his hair out of his eyes with one hand. "My friend, I cannot possibly give you three coppers for a tiny trinket such as this. My wife needs a new head scarf; perhaps I'll find one at the stall next door." He turned on his heel and began to walk into the laughing, shouting throng of strolling people outside.

"All right!" Amjad called from behind him.

Yes! Daniel thought, grinning broadly. He'd found the perfect gift for his wife, and would even have a copper to spare. He adopted a haughty expression as he slowly turned around, arching one eyebrow at the shopkeeper.

"Though my wife will make me sleep in the stables, though my children will have to eat the scraps of food left behind by the beasts, I will give you this for only two coppers," Amjad said, his face the picture of sorrow.

Daniel picked up the ring, and shook two coppers out of his belt pouch. "I will tell everyone that Amjad the jeweler is a fair and honest man," he said.

With a twinkle in his eye, Amjad wrapped his hand around the copper pieces. "And I will tell the other vendors that you are not a man to be trifled with."

\-----

Daniel shouldered his way into the crowd, impressed at the job Skaara, invisible for over an hour, had done in keeping his wife distracted. His mission was accomplished, the ring was tucked safely into his belt pouch for a later surprise, and he had one copper left. He would have looked for condoms, but he'd learned soon after his arrival that for a man to use condoms with his wife was considered the highest insult to her. Besides, mastage intestine, the material used for the condom, was quite a bit thicker than sheep intestine and less effective at transmitting sensation, or so he imagined. He'd been relying on the traditional pull-out-and-pray method used by 1950's high school students for birth control since he first lay with his wife. He'd seen a bowl of salt at the spice vendor, and salt probably meant ocean, and ocean meant fish, and he knew delicate fish intestines had been used as condoms by the Elizabethans. He thought for a moment of seeing if one of the vendors here had used the same material to build a better condom – but no. While he was sure Sha're wouldn't mind, he didn't want anyone to think he thought less of her than he did.

Perhaps, he thought as he followed the syncopated sound of drumming, he could buy a meal at one of the stalls and take Sha're on a picnic, as his parents had done with him when he was young. In the middle of his idle plans, thinking of that long-ago lunch by the Nile, his head suddenly felt light, and the world tilted slightly.

Since they'd blocked off the Stargate, just after O'Neill and his team left to go back to Earth, Daniel had experienced vertigo over and over again. He would think of how far he was from home, how Egypt and Washington and his parents' graves were so far away that even the star they circled around wasn't visible to his naked eye, and he'd feel dizzy. It felt like gravity was about to decide that Daniel, as an alien, wasn't subject to its rules, and he was sure at any moment he'd go flying off into the sky.

He caught a glimpse of Sha're through the crowd, moving gracefully next to the drums, and his heart slowed its racing pace as he entered her orbit. She saw him and smiled, biting her lower lip just a little, her eyes sparkling, and lifted one heel off the ground, rolling her hips as she turned her foot outward. Even with the robes she wore, largely shapeless except for the sash at her waist, her movements were sensual, hints of her curves revealed as she moved. She bent her head slightly and looked up at him through her eyelashes, reaching out an arm to draw him into the dance.

The first few times the vertigo had hit, Sha're seemed to see something in Daniel's eyes, or maybe the way his hands clutched at the sand, and leaned over and kissed him, tethering him to the earth. Now, whenever the familiar dizzy sensation began to take hold, he merely had to slip an arm around his wife, just as he was doing now, kiss the salty sweat from her throat, and a different, more welcome sensation would make his head spin. Sometimes, he swore he could feel Abydos' heart throb through her.

His eyes fell shut as he let his lips drift gently across her cheek, feeling the faint downy hairs there, opening his mouth a little so he could breathe her in, taste her on his tongue. For a moment, he was spinning in the dark with just her and the music; when he opened his eyes he was surprised to see the moving, shifting crowd around the little dance area. Sha're twirled once within the circle of his arms, and balanced on the balls of her feet to kiss him, her body long and lithe against his. "Come on," she whispered, grabbing his hand. He followed her as she ran lightly through the crowd despite her water sack and shoulder bag, dodging and weaving, securely tethered to the earth.

They burst out of the crowd, heading up a little rise in the sand, and Sha're, still running, pulled him behind the stalls. The tribesmen's draft animals, looking like some odd combination of Clydesdale and camel, were tethered a few feet away from the carts lined up neatly behind each stall, the scent of dung and hay mingling in the air.

Sha're looked from side to side, and then pulled him between two carts, letting her burdens slide to the ground. She had a wicked grin on her face. "I saw the way you looked at me when I danced," she said, pulling him closer, her hips swaying slightly to the echoing rhythm that could still be heard through the noise of the crowd.

"Yeah?" he breathed. It felt like being in high school again, and being pulled behind the gym to make out with a pretty girl. Well – no, it wasn't like being in high school at all, because no pretty girl had ever pulled him behind the gym, or anywhere else, to kiss. No one wanted to get too close to the weird, skinny foster kid with the glasses, worn secondhand clothes and nervous giggle. It felt like what being a teenager was supposed to be like, something Daniel had never experienced. He didn’t think Sha're had, either – she'd been too busy taking care of her brother, who was now having enough of a wild youth for both siblings.

Sha're looked at him, her head tilted to the side a little, assessing, as she touched him lightly through his robes with her outstretched fingers. Her eyes got a little wider, her breathing a little quicker as she looked him up and down. Daniel felt a pleasant trembling in his chest, like a flock of birds was soaring inside him. She was the most astonishing, improbable thing that had ever happened to him, even more improbable than stepping through a puddle of water and coming through the other side, coated with frost, on a desert world. She was so mercurial, always in motion. Even when interacting with visiting emissaries, when she adopted the demure manner required by the social mores of Abydos, there seemed to be the promise of an explosion of movement within her, a leashed energy just waiting to be exercised; he couldn't imagine how any guest could be deceived by her pretense of shyness. As she moved slowly toward him, bringing her lips up to his, he wondered again just how he'd managed to catch this wild, precious creature.

Her kiss, quickly moving from gentle to devouring, took his breath away. She tugged his robes up, sliding her hands underneath to caress his thighs, his buttocks, her body still moving to the insistent, sensual beat of the drums. He tore his lips away for a moment. "Here?" he said.

"No one will see us," she said. Then her lips turned up. "Probably."

Sha're liked the threat of being discovered, he'd learned since they married. Behind the stables, at the oasis, in her father's kitchen when he was meeting with important guests in the dining room – if there was a chance someone might interrupt them, his wife was likely to grab him and kiss him speechless, then fuck him quickly and aggressively against a wall, or on the floor, or one memorable time, on top of several sacks of yaffa flour in the storeroom while her friends ground the grain on the other side of the curtain. People lived on top of each other in the village, and everyone knew who was having sex in which tents and when they were doing it; Sha're seemed to get a special thrill of making love in places people would never expect, quietly and discreetly enough to keep the act a secret. At first he was flustered and nearly immobilized by anxiety at the threat of discovery, constantly looking around to check if anyone was coming, but her enthusiasm for the idea was infectious, and now he enjoyed her excitement almost as much as she liked the danger.

"Oh," he sighed, as she bit at the junction of his neck and shoulder, first gently, then slowly increasing the pressure. The feel of her sharp little teeth turned all his muscles to liquid, and as she slid her hand between his thighs to gently stroke his testicles, he leaned against the cart behind him, needing something to support himself. Her hands made his skin tingle, and even though the cart was hard against his back, he felt like he was still falling backwards. The sounds of the crowd were dim compared to the sound of his rough breathing – and hers, as her hand slid up his rapidly stiffening cock – and the creaking of the cart.

With a sudden shock, he realized he was still falling backwards. His eyes flew open as his ass hit the sand, his robes bunched awkwardly around his waist. He looked behind him. The cart he'd been leaning against rolled gently, then faster, and bumped against the next cart, which began to roll.

"Oh, no," Daniel said, watching the domino effect begin.

He looked up at his wife. Sha're's eyes widened as she saw what was happening. Then she reached out one hand to him and pulled him to his feet with a strength that belied any statements he'd made to Amjad about her frailty. "Come on, before they catch us!" she said, and pulled him up the hill as they heard crashing and chaos behind them. They got to the top and tumbled down the other side in an awkward tangle of limbs.

Daniel's hair covered his face as they rolled to a stop, and he tried to blow it away with a puff of air. It fell right back into his eyes, and Sha're snickered. He did it again, just to make her laugh more, and put one arm around her waist, curling up on his side next to her, for the moment ignoring the heat that rose off the sand.

She gently brushed his hair out of his eyes with a smile, and then began to chuckle. "I can't believe…" she said, her hands over her face. "We may have brought the whole market down!"

"Should we hide for a while?" he asked, running his hand idly over her stomach.

She rolled onto her side, her face close to his. They were in the middle of an enormous desert, a crowd was just over the hill, and yet it felt like they were in their own private bubble, a little sphere of reality that included only the two of them.

With a little smile, she rubbed her nose against his, then kissed his at the very tip. Her bright eyes roamed over his face.

"What?" he said, warm and a little nervous under her gaze.

Her smile widened, and she ducked her head, her cheeks turning pink. "I enjoy looking at you." She glanced up at him again, and touched one hand to his cheek. "You are beautiful," she said in English.

He considered for a moment explaining to her that the word "beautiful" was rarely used to describe men, but decided just to enjoy his wife's admiration, the product of a temporary insanity he hoped would not wear off. She pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one finger, then looked at him more closely, a small frown drawing her eyebrows together. "You're turning pink," she said. "We must find shade."

"Back to the tent?" he asked.

She groaned, rolling onto her back and throwing one arm over her face. "It will be so warm! I don't want to spend our midday rest there!" The midday rest period was how the Abydonians had adapted to their 36-hour day; Daniel was still adjusting to the whole siesta concept.

She let out a large sigh, and tapped her fingers on the back of his hand. Suddenly sitting up, she flashed a grin at him. "I have an idea. I will lead; you can carry." She pulled him up, shouldered her bag, handed him both water sacks, and once again they were running across the sand.

As they breathlessly topped another rise, he saw where she was leading him. The pyramid, avoided by the villagers since the death of Ra, was close by now, the dark doorway inviting in the bright late morning sun. He was surprised that Sha're had picked this place. It was the building where she had died, however briefly, several months ago, a place that most of the villagers wouldn't chance for fear of incurring the wrath of Ra's ghost. If she'd been raised on Earth, she'd be one of those people who parachutes, rides motorcycles and eats fugu, he thought, a little in awe at her fondness for risk.

Something glinted in the sand in front of the pyramid, the light flare momentarily making him squint. As they closed in, the angle changed, and he could see beyond the reflected sunlight to make out a gray, squarish shape half-emerging from the dunes. He stopped for a second, stunned, and then ran down the last hill toward the cube, heedless of his own safety and ignoring Sha're's shocked look as he half-sprinted, half-tumbled past her.

He fell to his knees and slid the last few feet down the dune, stopping just in front of the gray plastic box that was sticking half out of the sand, brushing it clear as quickly as he could. "Daniel!" Sha're called from behind. "Daniel, what is it?"

For a moment, the many languages Daniel knew collided in his throat, seizing up his vocal cords as he tried to explain what he'd found. His brain presented the words he needed in Arabic, in French, in Lithuanian, in Japanese, and he discarded them as quickly as they came up, reaching for Abydonian, which had suddenly fled from his mental grasp. He gestured wildly, trying to get the concept across by his hand motions. "Supplies," he finally gasped out. "This, all this, it was all buried by the sandstorm just after we arrived. It's all the supplies O'Neill and the Marines brought here with them."

Sha're's forehead was creased in concentration, and he realized his words had tumbled out in a messy pile of English. He tried to switch to Abydonian, and his brain rebelled again, presenting words in every language but the one he needed.

She smiled and kissed his forehead. "Supplies," she repeated, in English. "Brought by men. Your men." His jaw dropped open at her comprehension of his rapidly spoken, poorly articulated words. She laughed at his stunned expression, and ran one hand through his hair. "I will help…" She made a scrabbling gesture with her hands, then pointed at the box.

"Dig," he said, imitating her gesture.

"Yes, dig. But not for long," she said, and, smiling, tapped the tip of his nose. "Need shade." She knelt next to the plastic container, clearing off more of the lid.

"Okay, but I'd at least like to see what else is around here. They brought a lot of things that would be useful to us." As Daniel knelt beside her, he felt something lumpy and irregular shift beneath him. He dug with both hands, pushing the sand away until he could grab the revealed pack by one handle and, with a powerful tug, lift it from where it was buried. The sand surrounding it entered the hollow left behind, filling a little more as Sha're pushed the last of the dust off the top of the container.

"So," Sha're said, sitting back on her heels, speaking Abydonian again. "What is inside this box?"

"It could be food, maybe, or clothes. Or medical supplies – we could use them the next time a sickness spreads through the village," Daniel said. He grabbed the hefty metal tabs. The one on the left, heated by the sun for who knows long, scorched his hand. He shook his overheated fingers for a second, bringing them to his mouth with a hiss, and then wrapped his hand in the sleeve of his robe, popping the tab up and lifting the lid to reveal what lay within.

"Oh," Daniel said, disappointed. Inside the crate lay guns – far more weapons and ammo than Jack's team had left with Skaara and the other boys. His shoulders slumped a little, and suddenly he noticed the sun beating on his back, hot even at the cusp of the winter solstice, the sweat that was pooling in the crook of his elbow and the dip of his collarbone, the sullen stillness of the air.

"What is wrong?" Sha're asked.

He gestured at the contents of the container. "Out of everything we could have found, this – this is –" He shook his head again, running his hand through his hair, which felt hot enough to melt. "There are so many other things they could have brought to help everyone."

Sha're reached in, pulling out one of the lighter handguns and holding it a little awkwardly. "These are useful," she said. "The zoudj that come around the village at night, they could be hunted with these, kept away so they do not hurt anyone."  
He moved behind her, adjusting her grip on the gun. "Hold it like this – brace your left hand under the butt, here."

She turned her head, smiling. "You know how to use this?" she said. Her mouth was so close to his that he could feel her breath against his lips as she spoke.

"Yes," he said, sliding one hand up her arm, over her shoulder, and down to her waist. He didn't like the idea of intertwining guns and eroticism, but there was something about showing her how to hold the weapon that was undeniably sexy. "When I was – at home, my work –"

"Archaeology," she said, letting the English word drip from her lips with the same sensual pleasure she used for other difficult-to-translate terms she'd heard him use, like coffee and anthropology and sociolinguistics.

"Yes. I had to know how to use a gun to protect the workers from snakes and feral dogs," Daniel said, deciding not to mention the occasional artifact poachers he'd also fired upon. "This is the safety," he said, clicking the little lever into position. "If you set it like this, you can fire the gun." He moved it down. "Here, you won't be able to harm anyone."

"Can you teach me to use this?" Sha're asked, holding the gun just as he'd directed, aiming it at the pyramid.

Daniel nodded, then thought. "What if I taught Skaara and his friends?"

"The wild boys?" Sha're said skeptically, flipping the safety back on and handing him the sidearm.

"Well, they seemed to like the ones Jack left behind," he said, tucking the weapon back in the case, next to all its deadly brothers and sisters. "Maybe we can whip them into a little militia – a, uh, an organized force to protect the town from bandits. It would give them something productive to do."

Sha're helped him lower the lid. "My father would thank you for that. I fear that soon he will be entirely bald due to their tricks. And my brother is worst of all."

Daniel shook his head and laughed ruefully. "What?" Sha're asked.

"My foster father, Mr. Carver, used to say that I should go to military school to learn discipline. Now it sounds like I'm going to be running one," he said, turning to the pack. "This was Kawalski's," he said, fingering the name tag sewn into the side.

"Well?" Sha're asked impatiently.

Daniel frowned. "Well, it's his property. I don't want to…" He fumbled for words. The concept of invasion of privacy, and even the concept of privacy, was so foreign to Abydos that he didn't know where to begin.

"He will not be coming back to retrieve it," Sha're said, taking the pack out of his hands and untying the string that held the top closed. She slapped his hands away when he tried to open one of the front pockets. "You opened the box. It is my turn," she said, and reached inside, pulling out two small white plastic envelopes.

Daniel saw a flash of text on the side and immediately grabbed them out of her hands. In bold letters on the side, each one read: MRE ACCESSORY PACKET A: COFFEE, SUGAR, NON-DAIRY CREAMER, SALT, CHEWING GUM, MATCHES, TOILET TISSUE, HAND CLEANER. "Coffee!" he yelled excitedly, holding the packets up to the sky in one fist, laughing. The Abydonians might not have a solstice-related gift-giving holiday, but Christmas had come for Dr. Daniel Jackson.

Sha're reached up, snatched one packet out of his hand and admired it. "So this is coffee. I can finally taste this thing you have wished for every morning since we met?"

"Let's see what else is in here," Daniel said, reaching into the bag and grasping several larger plastic packets. "MREs!"

"What?" Sha're said.

He laid them out on the gray container. "They're food – they're made so they'll keep for a long time."

"Like journey bread?" Sha're asked.

"Much better than journey bread," Daniel said, amused to find himself extolling the wonders of military cuisine. "For one thing, they aren't made out of yaffa flour. We've got beef ravioli, jambalaya, beef enchiladas, chicken with Thai sauce –"

"How do you know what is in them?" Sha're asked.

Daniel underlined the big, block letters on the side of the packet with his index finger. "This says 'jambalaya'. Not that it's going to be much like what you'd get in –"

She looked sharply up at him, interrupting. "This is not how you have taught me to write!"

"Well, no," he said, sitting back on his heels, a little surprised at the sudden sharp turn in the conversation. "I used the writing of your language. It's a little different." He drew the hieroglyphs for food in the sand. "See, the symbols that you use are pictures – they're called pictographs," he said, using the more precise English terminology, then switching back to Abydonian.

He heard her whispering the word pictographs to herself as he continued, trying to break down complex linguistic concepts into the simple Abydonian words he knew. "Each symbol originally represented an idea – and there are languages that still work that way, like Chinese – but not long before your people left Earth, scribes assigned certain sounds to these images. That way, the reader didn't need to know too many symbols in order to transmit the ideas they wanted to get across. See, in an ideographic system, each symbol stands for a word or a concept, but if you don't know that symbol, you probably won't be able to read it unless you can gather the meaning from the other words in the sentence, even if you've heard the word before. In this system, even if you haven't seen that particular combination before, you might be able to figure out what it means because of the way the sounds fit together." He pointed at the words written in the Roman alphabet on the MRE packet. "These symbols –" no Abydonian word for evolve, find a synonym, even if it's not entirely accurate, "changed over thousands of years."

He brushed away the hieroglyphs he'd written in the sand, using one finger to draw the Phoenecian letter heth, a box with a line horizontally through the middle. "This is the Phoenecian symbol for fence. See the bars that go across here? But it's also their symbol for the sound huh," he said, aspirating the sound and exaggerating it. Next to the Phoenecian letter, he drew the Roman letter H. "And this is the letter in my language. There's no top or bottom bar, so it can be written even more quickly, but the sound is almost exactly the same. In my language, the individual symbols don't stand for an idea anymore, like they sometimes did for the Phoenicians; they just indicate the sound."

A drop fell to the ground, darkening a tiny circle of sand. He looked up at Sha're, suddenly embarrassed by his runaway enthusiasm, sure he was boring his practical wife with his talk of alphabetic evolution. She was staring intently at the letters he'd written, a frown of concentration on her face. Another bead of sweat was forming on the tip of her nose, unnoticed. Her eyes suddenly moved from the symbols to him, focusing sharply. "Tell me more," she said forcefully.

"Well, what do you want to know?" he asked, a little surprised at her response. "More about my writing, how to read it? More about different ways of writing? More about how the writing changed over the years?"

She looked at the symbols again, then back to him, something intense moving behind her dark eyes, different from the normal playful energy she exuded. "Everything. I want to know everything."

He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, then opened it again, running his hand through his hair. "That's…that's a lot. And I'm not sure –" he chuckled, nervously. "I’m not sure where to begin." At least we'll never be one of those couples with nothing to talk about, he thought. "You know, we have coffee, and MREs – let's stay here for a couple of days. Sleep in the pyramid, dig out everything." He looked over the sand; some of the ridges seemed unnaturally square, and he was sure that more Earth objects were buried just beneath the surface. "I can teach you when we're not digging. We've got enough food to last for a while. I'm sure there's water somewhere in these supplies. It'll be a working honeymoon."

"Honeymoon?" Sha're asked.

He dug deeper into Kawalski's pack, just to check out what was left in there, feeling past the socks, underwear, and extra MRE packets to find a Sterno can to heat them with, and a small metal pot with a lid, inside which were nested two plastic cups. "Among my people, there is a tradition that newly married people go far away from their friends and family to spend time alone with each other." There was a sleeping bag in there. He felt around at the bottom of the pack, to see if there was a chocolate bar or some other sweet tucked in the bottom. Was that it? No, he could feel a narrow strip of plastic, with oval ridges on it. He pulled it out, wide-eyed at his find.

"Kawalski, you foul-mouthed Marine, I could kiss you," Daniel said aloud, staring at what he held in his hand, a broad grin spreading across his face. There were six of them, in standard-issue military packets.

"What are they?" Sha're asked.

Daniel gripped them in his fist. "Condoms," he said, closing his eyes and breathing a sigh of relief. "We won't have to worry that you'll get pregnant." He knew that reuse wasn't recommended, and he would have been repulsed by the idea on Earth, but if he could get two or three uses out of each… "At least, not for a little while."

Sha're looked down at the ground, pressing her lips together. "You don't…" Her fingers tangled together, her knuckles white. "What can I do to be good enough to bear your child?"

"Oh, no, no, no!" Daniel said, realizing she'd taken what he said all wrong. He put one hand under her chin to tilt her face up toward him, smoothing her hair back from her face. "I want you to have my children. I want to have a whole throng of them, so many that we'll have to move out and start our own village." She still looked unsure, and he leaned in and kissed her. "But…childbirth is dangerous, especially here. I watched a woman die in childbirth while I was on a dig in Mexico. Your mother died in childbirth. I want you to have our children, but I don't want to lose you. I want to make it safer for you before we do."

"Don't women die in childbirth where you are from?" Sha're asked.

"They do, but it's very rare. And there's a lot of things we can do to make it less risky for you." He ran one hand over her dark, curly hair, kissed the top of her head. "I just want to wait until it's safer. I don't want anything to happen to you."

Sha're nodded, and tilted her head up to look at him. She ran one finger over his cheeks. "You are too pink. We must go inside," she said, and then kissed him. "We can take our afternoon nap, and then begin our honeymoon."

Daniel quickly stuffed everything back into Kawalski's pack and shouldered it, putting his free arm around his wife. As they walked toward the pyramid, he kissed the top of her head again. "Maybe – digging these things up isn't much of a honeymoon –"

"It sounds wonderful. Perhaps we can explore the inside of the pyramid, and see what objects Ra left there." She looked up at him, her eyes glowing. "I will not have to grind yaffa flour for days!"

"You don't like grinding yaffa flour?" he asked.

She raised her eyebrows at him as they stepped into the doorway of the pyramid. "Whenever I am grinding flour with the other women and you walk by, I take your hand and take you away somewhere so I can kiss you. Didn't you know I did this in part because I hated the work?"

Even out of the sun, his cheeks were flaring red. "Uh, no. Actually, I thought you were doing it because you really liked grinding yaffa flour."

She stared at him for a second, then wrinkled her nose, laughing. "No. I really like dancing, and riding on a mastage when it races across the dunes. They are exciting. Grinding yaffa flour is dull and tedious."

He nodded, filing the fact away. If he could learn to grind the flour for her, to take that tedious task from her shoulders, it would be another gift he could give her.

"Mmmm," she said, walking into the pyramid, her bare feet making a gentle sliding sound against the stone. The beige of her robes was just visible in the dimness, and the soles of her feet flashed white as she stepped further into the room. "It is so cool in here."

"Yeah," Daniel said, putting the pack down next to a pillar. He pulled out the padded sleeping bag that Kawalski had left behind, removing the large, heavy black Maglite flashlight he'd tucked into the middle, and spread it on the floor. Exploring the pyramid would be fascinating, but it had stood here for thousands of years and surely would last for thousands more. Even military coffee had a more limited life expectancy, and the molecules of his body was crying out for caffeine more loudly than the cells of his brain demanded to know what wonders were contained inside Ra's former lair. He unfolded the little stand for the metal pot and slipped the Sterno can underneath, pushing the button that would make it heat up, and then carefully poured water into the pot up to the two-cup line.

"We should bring torches," Sha're called, nearly invisible as she walked even further into the dark.

Daniel smiled a little, picked up the Maglite, and turned it on, aiming it at her. She gasped and turned around, holding up one hand to protect her eyes from the light. "I have one," he said to her.

She walked closer to him, and he aimed the light down, so it wasn't glaring into her eyes. "How…did you capture a piece of the sun?" she asked, her eyes wide.

"No, no," he said. He stood up and took her hand, and realized she was trembling. "No it's…do you remember how we put the piece of metal behind the oil lamp, to make it shine more brightly? Well – it's sort of like that." He wrapped her hand around the flashlight, and then moved her thumb onto the switch. "Press down."

She pressed, and with a click, the light switched off, leaving them in darkness. She gasped again. "What…"

"Press again," Daniel said, smiling.

She did, and light sprang from the bulb, washing the room in an incandescent glow. Her face was suffused with wonder as she looked up at him.

"It wasn't made by gods," Daniel said. "Only by men."

She pressed the button again, and with a click, it turned off. Another click, and it was on again. Another click, and it was off, and then, like a strobe, it was back on, and he could see her grinning maniacally in the light. "This is…wondrous!"

"We can use it a little later," he said, taking it gently from her hands and turning it off again, before she could drain the battery. "First, I wanted you to try coffee."

"Ah, coffee!" she said. "Finally!"

He took her hand and led her to the sleeping bag as if they were entering a fine restaurant. They sat cross-legged, and Daniel opened the packets, stirring the grains into the hot water.

Sha're stroked the sleeping bag. "This is so smooth and cool – it is like someone knit water together into fabric."

"It's warm, too, inside," Daniel said, adding sugar and non-dairy creamer to each cup. "We may be able to dig up a few more." He turned to pour the coffee.

"I tried to find something like your coffee at the market today, but I could not." Sha're told him. "That is why I asked my brother to keep you away from me, so I could look."

Daniel managed to recover just before the coffee overflowed over the edges of the cup. "You asked him to keep me away from you?" he said nonchalantly. "How did you get him to do that?"

"Last week I saw him stealing cakes from Kahai's windowsill," she said. "I told him I would tell Kahai who the culprit was unless he helped me."

"That little scam artist," Daniel whispered to himself.

"What?" Sha're asked.

"Here," Daniel said, handing her a cup of coffee. He wasn't about to admit that he'd been taken for a ride by her brother; maybe when they'd been married for ten years he could tell her the story, and the distance would make it funny. He held the other cup under his nose and inhaled the bitter, warm smell, indulging in the full sensory experience.

Sha're took a sip. He saw her lips purse in distaste for just a moment. She stared at the cup. "This is what you have been longing for?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, sipping from his own cup. The bittersweet flavor burst over his tongue, and he closed his eyes, suffused in caffeinated pleasure.

"You drink this?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, opening his eyes and smiling at her through the steam rising from his cup.

She looked down at her cup again, then back at him with an expression of disbelief, one eyebrow arched. "On purpose?"

"Well, it's instant, and they only had non-dairy creamer," he explained defensively, in English. Her left eyebrow still hovered; even if she hadn't understood most of his words, it was obvious the sense had gotten across, and she wasn't buying it. Resignedly, he took the cup from her hand, setting the coffee down next to the sleeping bag, determined to savor it.

Sha're shook her head and smiled, then stretched her legs out, placing her feet in his lap. He stroked one hand up and down her calf while sipping his coffee, admiring her, and then began massaging her calloused feet. She closed her eyes, leaning her head back and moaning in sybaritic pleasure, and he put down his now empty coffee cup so he could apply both hands to the task. Her other foot stroked his leg, her toes slowly caressing him with a spectacular amount of dexterity.

"Wait!" he said, grabbing her foot through the coarse wool of his robe before it touched the top of his thigh. "I have something for you."

She raised her eyebrows, giving him a suggestive look. Ignoring the implication, he unknotted the ties of his belt pouch and reached within for the tiny circle of metal. Smiling a little shyly, ducking his head and looking up at her through his eyelashes, he slid it onto the second toe of her right foot.

She stared at the blue stone set in the band of silver, a look of stunned happiness on her face. "It is beautiful," she said softly, looking at him. She looked back at the ring, twisting her foot this way and that to admire it. "No one – all my life, I have always wanted something beautiful. I would see the girls in the village walk by, with their colorful scarves and their hair twisted just so, held by shining combs. I wished I could be them. But – I have had to take care of my brother, and my father, and it seemed shameful to want such a thing for myself when there were so many other ways the money could be used." Her eyebrows drew together a little, and her voice got quieter. He caught her heel in his hand. "It seemed shameful to wish I could be beautiful like them."

"You are beautiful," Daniel interrupted, stroking her foot.

Sha're's dark eyes flashed up to meet his. "When you see me, then I am beautiful." She looked back at the little circle of silver, a complex cavalcade of emotions flashing over her face. "My father would not think to buy me anything that was not useful. Skaara would not think to buy me anything at all."

He was surprised to see her eyes shining with unshed tears as she stared at the ring. "I always wanted something beautiful," she whispered. With a little smile, she lifted her foot, looking up at him, and touched his chin with her toe. "And now, I have two things."

He took her foot in his hand again, gently working at the arch with his thumbs. "I'm not beautiful," he said, looking down at what he was doing, his bangs falling into his face.

"You are," Sha're said. He looked up at her. Her head was tilted slightly, and she was looking at him with the same intensity she'd previously turned on the scribbles he'd made in the sand. "You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

Daniel knew he wasn't beautiful. He'd seen himself in a mirror, on videotapes. He blinked too much, he stammered, he was gawky and unkempt and allergy-ridden. But in this moment, when Sha're said it, he believed her.

"I must have died and gone to the afterlife," she continued, smiling at him, settling back into her usual easy humor. "I have a soft bed, a cool room for our mid-day rest, and a beautiful man who dresses me in lovely jewels. Surely this much luxury cannot exist for those who are still alive. I must have been rewarded for my good behavior."

"Your good behavior. Do you mean pulling down the tent?" he asked, kissing the tip of her big toe. "Threatening your brother into deceiving me at the market?" he said, pleased that he'd found a way to talk around the English idiom blackmail, kissing the next toe. "Or taking advantage of me behind the market?"

She smiled at him, the teasing smile that held a lengthy list of sensual promises behind it. "Mm, taking advantage of you. I knew I had left some important task unfinished." She slid her free foot under the edge of his robe and up his thigh. It amazed him that her tough, rough feet could caress him so seductively.

His chest felt warm and full, and he knew the adoring looks they were exchanging were exactly the ones he'd mocked for years when he'd seen them worn by couples at restaurants or in the park. He turned his head and kissed the soft skin at the high arch of her foot, the one part that wasn't calloused and rough. When he looked at her again, lowering her leg to the ground, the tender, melting feeling in her eyes had been replaced by something warmer and more passionate, and her fire lit an answering spark within him.

Her mouth still tasted faintly of the coffee she'd drunk, and he slid his tongue deeper inside, tickling the sensitive spot just behind her front teeth as he reached his hands up to cup her face. He could kiss her for hours, and had. One night, tipsy on the slightly hallucinogenic cactus liquor that Skaara brewed up in his copious free time, he had lost himself in the gentle, smooth, soft curve beneath her lower lip, which seemed as fascinating and as vast as the Valley of the Kings to his sense-drenched mind. Now, with the tickly buzz of caffeine percolating just below his skin, he gently bit at her mouth, her moan vibrating his own lips.

Earth could keep its broad, soft mattresses, he thought as they leaned back onto the narrow satin sleeping bag, lying on their sides facing each other. Sha're was right. This little nest of creature comforts, which would have seemed so primitive and disagreeable from the vantage point of his studio apartment on Earth, was filled with far too many pleasures to be anything less than a postmortem reward for a life well lived. The Christians may have imagined a heaven with clouds and wings and spiritual rewards, but as Daniel slid his wife's robes over her head and tossed them to the side, he thought, inhaling her unique perfume, that he far preferred this Egyptian afterlife filled with sensual delights.

"You smell like saffron," he said, "and a river falling into the ocean."

"The ocean." She smiled up at him as he ran his hand down her side, admiring how she looked in the muted light and soft shadows that filtered in through the doorway. "The traders have told me of it, but – oh!" she gasped as he flicked his thumb over one dark nipple. "I have never seen it." She sighed a little as he lowered his mouth to her neck.

"We'll go," he breathed, and felt her quiver as the words caressed the sensitive flesh of her throat. He kissed the pulse point there, and the round strong muscle of her shoulder. "Next year, when the tribesmen come. We'll pack our tent and follow them to the ocean."

She slid her fingers into his tangled hair and tugged slightly, pulling his head up so she could whisper in his ear. He shivered with delight. "I want to make love to you there. I want to see your entire body wet and glistening under the moon. I want to lick the water from your collarbone, here," she said, running her finger in the hollow dip. The words, in the soft and sensual Abydonian tongue, slid into Daniel's ear, coiling around his brainstem and tickling his mind. It felt like the syllables were flowing along the inside of his skin, her voice caressing the inside of his neck, down his spine, all the spots her fingers couldn't ever reach. With a sharp indrawn breath, he rolled over onto his back, his senses invaded by the dip and swell of her voice, his cognitive faculties conquered by her words.

As she continued to spill her desires into his ear, her whispers no longer had meaning for him, but were living things, minions she sent to electrify every nerve so he would respond even more strongly to her hands as they roamed freely over his body. Soft strokes alternated with sharp scratches on his torso and legs, and he arched his back until he was rising off the floor, pressing himself more firmly against her hand.

He was naked now, even his glasses gone, and his skin was alive. His hands gripped her taut thighs as she straddled him, leaning forward so her mouth was against his ear, her breathy enticements tumbling through him. He could feel her slick labia wrapping around him, feel her sliding herself up and down the outside of his penis so the head slid over her clitoris, again and again. She kissed him, and when she lifted her mouth off him, the curtain of her rich dark hair falling around his face, her eyes were burning.

There was something…he was trying to remember, but she felt so good in his arms. The feel of the delicate skin of her breasts against his nipples was almost more than he could bear, and he wondered if someday Sha're would bring him to orgasm without a touch, by simply whispering into his ear until he came. She was so wet, so hot and wet around him, and he wanted to slide inside her.

"Wait!" he gasped out, and flung one arm blindly to the side, his fingers making contact with Kawalski's pack. He grabbed it and dug inside until he felt the narrow plastic strip. He tore one condom off one-handed – desperation and desire, it seemed, lent him dexterity – and clenched it in his hand, lifting his head up to kiss her. It was in his hand, and yet he wanted her so badly a part of him wanted to abandon the thing, just plunge deep inside her and ignore his worries about pelvic infection, breech birth and eclampsia. Her tempting, welcoming opening was sliding along the shaft of his cock, and all he would need to do was tilt his hips just slightly to slip into her waiting orifice.  
Instead, he tore the packet in half, taking her hips in his hands to lift her off him slightly so he could slip the condom on. The thin plastic clung to him snugly, and with one hand, he guided himself inside her.

She moaned as he slid in, reaching her fingers between her legs to rub the sensitive nub there as he ran his hands over her breasts, enjoying the full, heavy feeling of them, gently rubbing her nipples. He remembered his college roomate complaining that condoms decreased sensation, but at this moment Daniel felt relieved at any decrease in intensity; he was so over-stimulated he was sure he wouldn't last long. Sha're's hips moved in the same corkscrewing motion she'd used while dancing earlier, and she cried out as he rose up to meet her, driving himself even further inside. "Yes, Daniel, please!"

He slid his hand between his pelvis and hers, wanting to feel the wetness there. She slid her hand away and ground against his, and with his free hand, he brought her fingers up to his mouth. Just before he wrapped his mouth around them, he said, "Don't close your eyes when you come. Keep them open. I want you to look at me."

She cried out when he said it, and he could feel her tremble inside at the very suggestion. He wrapped his mouth around her index finger, stroking his tongue along the sensitive flesh, and the sight seemed to instantly trigger her. Her eyes unfocused slightly as she began to contract around him. He could feel the tension inside himself, wound tight like a spring about to release, and he breathed deeply, trying to stave it off for just a few more seconds so he could enjoy the site of his wide-eyed wife in the throes of orgasm.

She contracted around him tightly, rippling, sending him over the edge. He fought to keep his eyes open, looking at her, his left hand gripping her thigh, falling deeper and deeper into her as his seed pulsed out.

She shivered on top of him, sending little sparking echoes through his body. Everything sounded muffled and distant, that odd momentary hearing loss he always seemed to experience after an especially intense orgasm. She slowly leaned down, lying on top of him with her head on his shoulder, gently kissing his neck, and he sighed with contentment.

"We finally found a place sturdy enough to stand up to our lovemaking," he said.

He could feel her lips curve against his chest. "This time," she said, sliding off him as he reached one hand down to make sure the condom didn't come away with her. "I doubt it will last through our honeymoon." Her eyes were closed; he could tell she was half asleep already.

He slipped the condom off and dropped it into the empty coffee wrapper, then rolled over onto his side, spooning against her. This was love. This was bliss, lying here at the winter solstice in the abandoned residence of a newly dead god. As Daniel fell asleep curled up against his wife, he knew that this was exactly where he was supposed to be.


End file.
